Ān Kuò had been gone for a week.
Inside Factor IV, that meant very little.
Specialists at his level disappeared more often than they appeared. Missions came without announcements, reports arrived without names, and sometimes even success returned without the people responsible for it. Those outside his circle rarely knew him beyond a codename, if they knew him at all.
Which was exactly why Violet had asked Mù Xiāo Xiāo for him. Not because she expected him to be waiting, but because anyone who recognized the name would understand she wasn't guessing.
Xiāo Xiāo had. She hadn't questioned it for a second. She had simply nodded and led them here, assuming Violet already knew the man who had once given her a single instruction.
'Watch the Yè residence.'
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Factor IV's temporary operations room occupied what had once been a storage laboratory.
Portable displays had replaced old filing cabinets. Fibre-optic cables crossed the floor in tidy bundles, disappearing beneath folding worktables where technicians monitored live network traffic. No one hurried. They simply moved with the quiet confidence of people who had rehearsed emergencies too many times.
Violet stood near one of the screens, hands tucked inside her cardigan pockets. She wasn't watching the monitors. She seemed to be waiting for them to reach the same conclusion she already had.
Nearby, Qiū Huà Bǐ lowered himself onto the floor, one knee raised comfortably. From his hoodie pocket, he produced a matte-black terminal no larger than a paperback novel. It unfolded silently into a thin touchscreen, its surface waking beneath his fingertips with a faint blue glow.
Ān Bái stared.
"...That's it?"
Qiū Huà Bǐ didn't look up.
"If I need more..."
His fingers rested lightly on the screen.
"...I'm doing it wrong."
For a brief moment, his thoughts drifted back to the meeting room.
Violet had gestured toward him as casually as if she were introducing someone at lunch.
"Qiū Huà Bǐ. They've been trying to recruit him."
He'd almost laughed.
Who recruited people by harassing them?
Then another thought had answered before anyone spoke.
People who ransack ancestral homes.
He hadn't heard it from Violet or Yè Yī. Those two minds remained completely silent to him.
So he had done what he always did when curiosity became unbearable. He listened elsewhere.
Ān Bái.
> Blow the whole organization sky-high... If it wasn't for the 'Rules of Order'...
Ān Shēn.
> Recruitment...? why now...?
Ān Tiān Qǐ.
> Another search...? another relic...?
Then—
Mù Xiāo Xiāo.
> I'm hungry.
Qiū Huà Bǐ had stared at her for a full second. He felt like facepalming himself... hard. Out of everyone in the room... That was what occupied her mind?
Before he could recover—
Violet continued.
"...Anyway."
"He's a hacker."
Every head had turned toward him.. Except Xiāo Xiāo's. She was still watching the fish in the aquarium.
"And since everyone feels guilty about the 'spy-watching'..."
Violet made a small gesture.
"...you wouldn't mind granting one humble request."
Her usual half-smile returned. There was something colder behind it now. It wasn't hostility.., but 'expectation'.
The memory dissolved.
Qiū Huà Bǐ's fingers began moving. There was no frantic typing. No dramatic cascade of commands.
He touched the screen only when necessary, pausing more often than he moved.
To anyone watching, it looked slow.
To the network, it was invisible.
The room remained unchanged.
With no warning lights, no alarms, no technicians rushing toward consoles.
Nothing.
Ān Bái folded his arms.
"...Is something supposed to happen?"
"It already did."
Qiū Huà Bǐ lifted one finger from the terminal and closed the device with a quiet click.
"I'm finished."
Silence.
Ān Bái blinked.
"...Finished what?"
Qiū looked up.
"We're inside."
Nobody answered.
Ān Shēn crossed the room immediately, dropping into an empty chair before another workstation. His fingers flew across the keyboard.
Authentication.
Security heartbeat.
Traffic logs.
Everything looked normal...
Too normal?
He checked again, then again.
Nothing.
No intrusion. No anomaly.
No failed authentication.
No trace anyone had entered at all.
Slowly, he turned back toward Qiū Huà Bǐ.
"...How?"
Qiū shrugged.
"They built a system that expects people to behave normally."
A small pause.
"I don't."
Ān Bái let out a quiet whistle.
"That..."
He looked between the terminal and Qiū Huà Bǐ.
"...shouldn't be possible."
"It is."
Qiū leaned back on one hand.
"They simply never imagined someone like me."
Only the last thought stayed inside his head.
'I'd already mapped more than half their architecture back at the arcade. Tonight was supposed to be the difficult part... It wasn't. Honestly..... I expected more'.
Violet smirked, like she already knew what Qiū Huà Bǐ was thinking.
She finally spoke.
"Proceed with internal mapping."
Qiū glanced toward her.
"No shortcuts?"
"No."
"Full crawl?"
"Yes."
She offered nothing else.
He nodded once and reopened the terminal. The interface shifted. This time it wasn't faster but cleaner.
Permission after permission unfolded without ever asking permission.
Doors acknowledged credentials that had never existed. Security cameras continued watching empty corridors while unseen footsteps passed quietly through them.
Logs recorded ordinary activity. Routine diagnostics. Routine maintenance. Routine silence.
Inside ET... nothing unusual happened.
It wasn't because their security was weak.. but someone had entered without disturbing the shape of the room.
Ān Shēn watched Qiū Huà Bǐ for a long moment.
"You've done this before."
A faint smile appeared.
"I don't like locked doors."
He said it so casually that it took a second to realize he wasn't joking.
Ān Bái exchanged a glance with his brother. An idea had already formed.
"You ever think about joining a permanent unit?"
Qiū Huà Bǐ looked up.
Before he could answer—
"He won't."
Every eye turned toward Violet. She hadn't looked away from the monitor.
"He doesn't stay."
Her voice remained level.
"He was never built for organizations."
Qiū Huà Bǐ looked at her.
That answer surprised him, not because it was wrong, but he'd never said it aloud. How had she been so sure?
Ān Shēn frowned.
"You sound very certain."
"I am."
No one questioned her again.
Several minutes later, the crawl completed. Qiū removed a slim encrypted drive from the side of his terminal and placed it gently on the table.
"Internal mapping."
He nudged it toward Ān Tiān Qǐ.
"Topology, access routes, partial archive index. If you want deeper extraction later..."
He looked toward Violet.
"...I can make it disappear while I'm doing it."
Violet gave a single nod.
"You'll know when."
Not 'if'.
'When'.
Qiū slipped the terminal back into his hoodie. Yè Yī rose quietly beside him. Without another word, Violet turned toward the exit. The other two followed.
Ān Bái watched the door close behind them.. Only then did he speak.
"...Who is she?"
Nobody answered immediately.
Ān Shēn kept staring at the empty doorway.
Finally, he said,
"It's worse than knowing things before they happen."
Ān Bái looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
Ān Shēn lowered his voice.
"...She behaves like they've already happened."
Silence settled over the room.
Far away, inside an ET facility, operators monitored their systems without concern.
Status indicators remained green. Routine reports continued arriving exactly on schedule.
No alerts. No breaches. No evidence.
Someone had entered. Someone had left a mark.
Yet ET would spend a very long time believing nothing had happened at all.